Hi all! As a Brazilian I can put my two cents in about WotC not publishing D&D (and Magic as well by the way) in portuguese anymore: 1. Brazil has a huge RPG culture and community, we love games and RPGs really took over in the 90s, with a lot of people playing and several livestreams. 2. I agree with Shawn that it's largelly an economic problem. As he said a US$70 book in Brazil is about R$320, which is really expensive considering our minimum wage is currently R$1412. Most people earn between 2000 and 4000. A R$8000 wage is in the top 10% of the population. 3. The prices are this high here because dispite the books being translated, they are essentialy still imported books, and there's a lot of taxes making the prices go up. 4. Because of that, buying an english version is the same as buying the translated one, and many people (me included) who speak english prefer the originals to avoid bad translations. 5. Despite all that, no one I know who plays is leaving the game behind. I GM and play in several games, and there's no plans to stop. 6. Finally, as I said, Brazil has a really great RPG market, and we have SEVERAL games made in Brazil, from classic medieval fantasy like Old Dragon 2e and Tormenta D20, to modern day paranormal misteries like Ordem Paranormal, to colonial mythical adventures like Bandeira do Elefante e da Arara. So we are well served in games to play. That was more like two dollars than two cents (insert inflation joke here) but anyway, I'm sad to see D&D stop being translated to Portuguese, but it's not the first time and I'm sure it'll come back eventually. Untill then we'll keep rolling dice, and I'll keep listening to the greatest podcast in all the Realms! Lot's of love from Brazil, keep up the great work!!
On the matter of translation, I'd argue it's more about taste than bad translation. When people have been calling a creature "bugbear" for 30 years, it's hard to switch into calling them "bugurso" (literally bug + bear in portuguese)
Also before Wizards was publishing, a local boardgames company was publishing the book at about half the price (R$149). These folks really cared about making it accessible Then Gale Force 9 got shot down, which meant Wizards took the rights for them and they dropped all of the previous efforts to keep book prices compatible with what the market could consume
11/10 on the outro today folks. Now let's split the party.... Dael and Ben on etherial vocals and Shawn and James covering the vocalized percussion for the next episode! I believe in you all, you can do it!
There are lots of different owlbears plushes available. Also beholders, mimics, red dragons, etc. They don't sell that well. They're almost always in clearance bins.
D&D certainly *has* some cute plushies, but I think it undermerchandises, if that makes sense. Like, sure, create cute quasi-random cuddle critters inspired by dungeon adventures, but more explicitly connect them with their own names, lore, relatiinships, conflicts, and implied adventures. And give the line a rolls-off-the-tongue & brand-synergetic title that kids can say, and that they can eventually connect more overtly with D&D without beating them over the head with "buy our game now!"
I'm very immersed in D&D babies right now, probably 4 families I know have The ABCs (and 123s) of D&D. I do agree with Dael that there's money to be made in D&D-themed (but not overt) toys, plushies, and children's books.
The thing about the owlbear plushy - and things like it - is the same thing that the crew were talking about earlier: a lot of us are of a generation where young-to-tween kids are large parts of our lives. And *that's* the market Hasbro's potentially missing out on by not maintaining more D&D monster toys. As Dael says, it's what a parent like me buys for his daughter (in my case, for example, one of her first soft toys was a giant d20). But perhaps more importantly, when you take your kid to your FLGS, they're things that they can get excited by and want, knowing that it's a way to be a part of a thing their parents do even before they can dive all the way in. Edit: and of course, no sooner do I post than Dael gets to exactly the point I was making. So instead, I'll just grab onto her coattails for how the 80s changed toys. RIP Lego Space.
I don't see why people are giving Dael flak about the "S. P. E. R. M. Principle". It's clearly named after the whale species. "That hero over there"? Is that what "T. H. O. T." stands for? I think the thing that makes the Pokémon analogy a bit of a weird fit is that there's so many different entry points to the fandom: There's the video games, the anime, the card game, the merch on its own. I don't know know if D&D merch is entirely comparable. I think it's not not-comparable, but I'm not sure it's 100% either.
Its interesting to see the difference between your opinions on toys and marketing. I note that shaun is the only one of you that had cartoons that weren't designed as toy ads as a kid. The parents of today are the kids of transformers, he-man, barbie etc. I hate to admit it but id buy a demogorgon plushie for my kid in a snap and I'm less affected than many in my demographic
You mean Dael hasn't read the lore from the funny disclaimers in each hardback D&D book? Let the gatekeeping commence!! (content warning for sarcasm ;-) )
I have run a couple Eberron Campaigns, both of which contained references to the Dragonmark Houses or the Lich Queen, or named organisations from that world. So I think you easily can have D&D lore that players can interact with, you just need to present it in the right way. Toys in a sandbox that you can pick and choose, throw around, rather than Drizzt that is the best at everything and you avoid introducing for exactly that reason.
i think critical role is going to keep an exandria stream, a candela obscura stream, and a make a new stream for daggerheart. running three streams allows them to have different types of projects going on, differnet types of guests, and different types of advertising.
@@Teschmacher they bought the rights to midst, so I would say whatever Third Person wants to do. I think they’re a big enough company to hire someone to do the programming
Definitely siding with Dael on the plushie discussion. My two year old has never played but man, does she love her beholder and displacer beast plushies and the squishy d20 "balls" she tosses around (while yelling "NAT TWENTY!")
Hahahahaah 8.000R$ monthly average salary... the average monthly salary per capita in Brazil is minimum wage at best, which is at 1.350R$ . D&D books aren't sold at USD values though, they usually cost between 120R$ and 160R$. It's still expensive so buying RPG books is mostly restricted to middle class. Regardless, we often import books anyway, and thankfully our country doesn't charge import taxes on books. The hobby is so strong in Brazil that we've been playing since the 80s. I started at 9 years old in 1992 thanks to my brother who is 7 years older than me.
One of the points that came up I think is one of the reasons why I like Exandria more than Faerun or other D&D settings. It actually *has* a canon and established heroes and cameo characters that have influenced the world. Best believe I'm gonna butcher a German accent and have my favourite hobo wizard drop in to provide some wisdom and perhaps the use of a emotional support cat for 30 mins or so during a session
I grew up playing 1st and 2nd edition in the 80s and read a lot of the novels back then, so I definitely know a lot of the FR and Dragonlance characters & lore. I just turned 50, like the game. Yay me! Now, I need the longevity secrets of the druids. (I love my owlbear dice holder plushy...)
30:09. The RUclipsr Ben is on about is called The Grungdon Master. Personally, and this is me talking, I think he tends to overthink a lot of classic troupes. Again, that's just me talking.
I think Wizards needs to sell the classes and heritages. That’s what you choose to play and as a child how you engage in that world. To your point about buying the shield and the gauntlets, you sell the spell books, Wild shape forms and the holy avengers
I agree with Dael on the plushie discussion. I have a 1 year old who has so many plushies/dolls that she has no clue what IP they are from and some that even I don't know the IP. But I definitely have gotten her D&D clothes lol
re: dropping Portuguese translation: I work in an industry where supporting languages outside of English is also a big deal, but adds a lot of labor to the development cost. Most companies seem to do as WotC did and base translation on profit margin. I know a few companies that have committed to broader language coverage and absorb additional labor costs, but those are rare.
Well, the translation to portuguese is kind of a recent thing here in a brazil anyway, compared to how long 5e has been around, and there are only a few books that received those translations ( and its not even that good of a translation tbh ), its sad but those that already played dnd here a few years back did it either through fan translations or simply in english. I think as a community, we here in brazil are used to having to deal with it. I dont think it'll affect that much the ttrpg scene here, but it 100% sucks for those that dont know english and were getting to know the game now.
I never used the setting lore or characters in any deep way, though I loved reading the novels and campaign books. I miss them, it always gave me inspiration. Each setting felt unique. Now the so called settings in DnD feel shallow and if people want lore, its very surface level or non existent.
The simplest way to lay out factions is to divide them into factions the PCs might join and enemy forces. If the players join one or more factions, look up how faction membership is rewarded in Ravnica or Theros and adjust accordingly. For all other factions the party isn't connected to, give them a clock to track their goals that run counter to the party's goals or let them sit in the background. If an enemy faction doesn't have a goal that can be tracked with a clock that the PCs need to race against, then that faction doesn't really matter in the campaign.
RE: Marketable toys and plushies: D&D is a TTRPG, and I think Hasbro would be reticent to invest in things that may make it look anything other than a TTRPG. Keyword being "may". Hasbro invests in the brand, but that means making you think that it is still about the game. If they made toys and plushies, that would give an impression to some of its fanbase that the game is moving away from being this thing that you do on the table. I think apparel is immune to this because anything can be on a shirt with no consequence, and wearing your interests is a normal thing. The Lego deal is immune to this because Hasbro did not make Lego- it was a partnership deal, and people already have a history of using Lego as alternatives for minis. The D&D VTT is immune to this because there was already a trend where people play on VTTs, and Hasbro wants to offer an official alternative. However, if you make toys or plushies, that is sending a message that you want to appeal to kids, and there are people in this fanbase that do not want to be looked as "kid consumers". If you want toys or plushies, better hope someone strikes a marketing deal with Hasbro for that- at least with that, people will think that this is not 100% a Hasbro move.
RE: Important Characters: D&D can't have many "main good guys" because it inspires you the player to be that main good guy, whether the setting is from an established one or not. You can tell this in fanart that people do- it's occupied mostly by party OCs. Villain art is rare, and if you see that then it's likely the DM's work (or commissioned by the DM).
I find it weird when Shawn said that people though Dragonlance was a corruption of D&D, to me, there has been nothing more D&D than the Dragonlance books. For starters it had dragons everywhere, and plenty of dungeons, and like almost every home game, a bunch of homebrew stuff to make the game unique to that setting. I also think it was a good basis for a D&D show, as it had all those elements and a highly dramatic and well written story that is familiar to older gamers and and new and fresh to new players, but also in my opinion, a story that would still be compelling to people that don't have any interest in D&D.
that intro was certainly a choice lol i think critical role watches this, they just posted an announcement for a playtest of daggerheart. i too thought it was coming out sooner than 2025 with all the promo they were doing for it when it comes to selling merch based on characters, i do agree that it's mostly a scale problem. i think this came up with the whole hasbro wanting to monetize dnd. that's why they want to make movies and video games and now theyre doing more books. can sell stuff off those and it will hopefully bump the brand to the next scale. they tried it really hard with the movie, all kids of toys and plushies love the outro, not a babida babida but still quite nice :D
I am a Japanese speaker living in Japan. English relies on machine translation. For the past few years, I've been mainly playing D&D5e. Japan certainly has its own TRPG culture. It feels like there's a lot of narrative-driven playstyle centered around Call of Cthulhu. There are a variety of publishers in Japan, from indies to long-established publishers, and there are many other Japanese-language high fantasy games that can be played in a campaign style other than D&D. To be honest, D&D has a lot of enthusiastic fans, but I don't hear about people playing it very deeply, probably because it doesn't mesh well with the one-shot-centered game style. Sales were neither good nor bad. While it runs out of stock in urban areas, small stores in the suburbs remain unsold on store shelves. I hope the sales of D&D Japanese are not canceled. Or maybe someone will accept a contract to translate Tails of The Valiant. I'm an investor in The Aetherial Expanse, so I hope and trust that you'll enjoy the product.
30:45 I would say 5e is not great for low magic settings because of how powerful spellcasting is and how magical honestly all the classes are. If you need to play 5e with glacial level progression and with only a third of the classes to get a low magic setting to work, a different game would be better suited for the task. I have seen people use the old addage "your heroes are the exception" to justify low fantasy games in 5e, and it's fine if that is enough to suspend your disbelief on this matter, but to me that isn't a good justification. D20 systems for low magic, gritty fantasy works just as well as any other system, like that skeleton is pretty neutral, but as soon as you put the muscle of classes and spellcasting on there, it becomes a harder sell (while yes, the fat of individual spells and subclasses and ancestries can be trimmed easily).
Dael, you're charging your laser wrong. You're supposed to hide your fist in the sleeve of a long shirt and grab it with your other hand so that the cuff at the end of that sleeve looks like the muzzle of a mega buster. 😆
Re: TTRPG toys. My biggest problem with them is quality. I saw the action figures from the D&D movie and I wouldn't even buy them on super mark-down prices; they're super ugly! (And the female figures were super-scarce -- as in, I couldn't find any.) I love the owlbear plushie, but I'm not paying 5x the usual plushie price for a D&D-branded tag on it. I am a mini collector, but the D&D branded stuff looks like garbage.
On toys and collectibles, I think it's nearly a guarantee that a Critical Role action figure would do better than an Acererak one. A Critical Role Magic The Gathering set would do better than the generic D&D one too, I think. Some people perform their fandoms a lot more than others, and some fandoms encourage the performance of the fandom a lot more. D&D is not a fandom that people tend to perform in public on display to the rest of their lives. Most D&D players may have a t-shirt or sticker. Many Many Many more Critical Role fans will have art, toys, shirts, cosplays etc of that fandom.
I think the Owlbear plushie market is for grandma who knows her grandkids like this D&D thing (they don't know whet that means) and buy it as a christm as gift.
I feel genuinely sorry for this generation that is getting into D&D without any novel line to get them into the lore. "D&D isn't really a world with stories in it, or that has a canon..." Well, it certainly used to. I get that, yes its a RPG, and you can build your own worlds, but I LOVE the Forgotten Realms, and I think you can be a fan of the game and the lore and separate the two.
Do enough people care about another opinion on TRRPG news to pay for it when there’s a lot of free opinions in RUclips and numerous blogs? Just wonder if it will pay off in the end for them. I hope them the best, regardless!
I think you should learn more lore before dropping ideas like retconning the lore. There are hunderds of novels, retconning them all would be as bad idea as disney retconning the extended star wars universe.
I really like all the times that Ben calls for Dante to do an edit and leave out his flub and then Dante includes the whole thing
Ben: "Dante, you can do a snip snip here?"
Dante: "No :D "
@@KryssCom1 To be fair, I think Dante probably answers, ‘Yes, I can.’ ;)
Always love to see Luna on the broadcast. She brings so much cheer and joy 😊
Ben: "Whatever happened to Daggerheart?"
Darrington Press: "Daggerheart playtest coming 12th March"
Look forward to putting that news in the microwave next week. 😅
The microwaved spaghetti strikes again
Classic Lorecast.
*during the livestream* "There's no news about
*between the livestream and the release of the podcast/VOD* "Here's HUGE NEWS on !"
But why male models?
The fire giant on the cover of the PHB is King Snurre. Just inside the first page or two there are artist credits and a section "On the Cover."
I don't fault anyone for not knowing that. It's not important. I'm mostly just leaving a comment for *the algorithm*.
For a long time I thought Manshoon was a Myconid. Manshoon the mushroom man just made sense to me,
Hi all! As a Brazilian I can put my two cents in about WotC not publishing D&D (and Magic as well by the way) in portuguese anymore:
1. Brazil has a huge RPG culture and community, we love games and RPGs really took over in the 90s, with a lot of people playing and several livestreams.
2. I agree with Shawn that it's largelly an economic problem. As he said a US$70 book in Brazil is about R$320, which is really expensive considering our minimum wage is currently R$1412. Most people earn between 2000 and 4000. A R$8000 wage is in the top 10% of the population.
3. The prices are this high here because dispite the books being translated, they are essentialy still imported books, and there's a lot of taxes making the prices go up.
4. Because of that, buying an english version is the same as buying the translated one, and many people (me included) who speak english prefer the originals to avoid bad translations.
5. Despite all that, no one I know who plays is leaving the game behind. I GM and play in several games, and there's no plans to stop.
6. Finally, as I said, Brazil has a really great RPG market, and we have SEVERAL games made in Brazil, from classic medieval fantasy like Old Dragon 2e and Tormenta D20, to modern day paranormal misteries like Ordem Paranormal, to colonial mythical adventures like Bandeira do Elefante e da Arara. So we are well served in games to play.
That was more like two dollars than two cents (insert inflation joke here) but anyway, I'm sad to see D&D stop being translated to Portuguese, but it's not the first time and I'm sure it'll come back eventually. Untill then we'll keep rolling dice, and I'll keep listening to the greatest podcast in all the Realms!
Lot's of love from Brazil, keep up the great work!!
Also, truth be told, brazilians will still consume a lot of D&D, except it'll involve a lot of Skull & Bones
Also, I'm sure people will still be playing lots of D&D, except it will be under Skull & Bones
Too bad it didn't last =/
On the matter of translation, I'd argue it's more about taste than bad translation. When people have been calling a creature "bugbear" for 30 years, it's hard to switch into calling them "bugurso" (literally bug + bear in portuguese)
Also before Wizards was publishing, a local boardgames company was publishing the book at about half the price (R$149). These folks really cared about making it accessible
Then Gale Force 9 got shot down, which meant Wizards took the rights for them and they dropped all of the previous efforts to keep book prices compatible with what the market could consume
@@fiorasvante sure, but not always, RUclips can buy the books in english, altough they are expensive
I see a new Eldritch lorecast I watch. Plain and simple.
Ben just continuing to draw the ire of the various TTRPG enclaves 😂 First MCDM, now Critters/Candel-ers(?)
11/10 on the outro today folks. Now let's split the party.... Dael and Ben on etherial vocals and Shawn and James covering the vocalized percussion for the next episode! I believe in you all, you can do it!
There are lots of different owlbears plushes available. Also beholders, mimics, red dragons, etc.
They don't sell that well. They're almost always in clearance bins.
We D&D players have our collectables/toys - our miniatures and dice!
D&D certainly *has* some cute plushies, but I think it undermerchandises, if that makes sense.
Like, sure, create cute quasi-random cuddle critters inspired by dungeon adventures, but more explicitly connect them with their own names, lore, relatiinships, conflicts, and implied adventures.
And give the line a rolls-off-the-tongue & brand-synergetic title that kids can say, and that they can eventually connect more overtly with D&D without beating them over the head with "buy our game now!"
I'm very immersed in D&D babies right now, probably 4 families I know have The ABCs (and 123s) of D&D. I do agree with Dael that there's money to be made in D&D-themed (but not overt) toys, plushies, and children's books.
The thing about the owlbear plushy - and things like it - is the same thing that the crew were talking about earlier: a lot of us are of a generation where young-to-tween kids are large parts of our lives. And *that's* the market Hasbro's potentially missing out on by not maintaining more D&D monster toys. As Dael says, it's what a parent like me buys for his daughter (in my case, for example, one of her first soft toys was a giant d20). But perhaps more importantly, when you take your kid to your FLGS, they're things that they can get excited by and want, knowing that it's a way to be a part of a thing their parents do even before they can dive all the way in.
Edit: and of course, no sooner do I post than Dael gets to exactly the point I was making. So instead, I'll just grab onto her coattails for how the 80s changed toys. RIP Lego Space.
I'm perpetually 6 months behind on dnd news... Still, love this podcast and eventually watch every episode.
I don't see why people are giving Dael flak about the "S. P. E. R. M. Principle". It's clearly named after the whale species.
"That hero over there"? Is that what "T. H. O. T." stands for?
I think the thing that makes the Pokémon analogy a bit of a weird fit is that there's so many different entry points to the fandom: There's the video games, the anime, the card game, the merch on its own. I don't know know if D&D merch is entirely comparable. I think it's not not-comparable, but I'm not sure it's 100% either.
Its interesting to see the difference between your opinions on toys and marketing. I note that shaun is the only one of you that had cartoons that weren't designed as toy ads as a kid. The parents of today are the kids of transformers, he-man, barbie etc. I hate to admit it but id buy a demogorgon plushie for my kid in a snap and I'm less affected than many in my demographic
You mean Dael hasn't read the lore from the funny disclaimers in each hardback D&D book? Let the gatekeeping commence!! (content warning for sarcasm ;-) )
I have run a couple Eberron Campaigns, both of which contained references to the Dragonmark Houses or the Lich Queen, or named organisations from that world. So I think you easily can have D&D lore that players can interact with, you just need to present it in the right way. Toys in a sandbox that you can pick and choose, throw around, rather than Drizzt that is the best at everything and you avoid introducing for exactly that reason.
1:04:40 Good point. An action figure of my character would have had infinitely more appeal to young me than Elminster or whoever.
i think critical role is going to keep an exandria stream, a candela obscura stream, and a make a new stream for daggerheart. running three streams allows them to have different types of projects going on, differnet types of guests, and different types of advertising.
But then would they drop Midst? That's a lot of programming to juggle.
@@Teschmacher they bought the rights to midst, so I would say whatever Third Person wants to do. I think they’re a big enough company to hire someone to do the programming
Definitely siding with Dael on the plushie discussion. My two year old has never played but man, does she love her beholder and displacer beast plushies and the squishy d20 "balls" she tosses around (while yelling "NAT TWENTY!")
Hahahahaah 8.000R$ monthly average salary... the average monthly salary per capita in Brazil is minimum wage at best, which is at 1.350R$ . D&D books aren't sold at USD values though, they usually cost between 120R$ and 160R$. It's still expensive so buying RPG books is mostly restricted to middle class. Regardless, we often import books anyway, and thankfully our country doesn't charge import taxes on books. The hobby is so strong in Brazil that we've been playing since the 80s. I started at 9 years old in 1992 thanks to my brother who is 7 years older than me.
One of the points that came up I think is one of the reasons why I like Exandria more than Faerun or other D&D settings. It actually *has* a canon and established heroes and cameo characters that have influenced the world. Best believe I'm gonna butcher a German accent and have my favourite hobo wizard drop in to provide some wisdom and perhaps the use of a emotional support cat for 30 mins or so during a session
I grew up playing 1st and 2nd edition in the 80s and read a lot of the novels back then, so I definitely know a lot of the FR and Dragonlance characters & lore. I just turned 50, like the game. Yay me! Now, I need the longevity secrets of the druids.
(I love my owlbear dice holder plushy...)
My kid is 9 months old and i love dming with him at the table for exactly daels reasoning
30:09. The RUclipsr Ben is on about is called The Grungdon Master. Personally, and this is me talking, I think he tends to overthink a lot of classic troupes. Again, that's just me talking.
On the owl bear plushy. I am a parent and each of my kids have a d&d plushie. Older one owl bear , son beholder plushie, daughter Boo plushie,
I'm not sure if Dael realizes how RUclips etc feeds very adult and mature content to young kids
I think Wizards needs to sell the classes and heritages. That’s what you choose to play and as a child how you engage in that world. To your point about buying the shield and the gauntlets, you sell the spell books, Wild shape forms and the holy avengers
Great episode!!
I agree with Dael on the plushie discussion. I have a 1 year old who has so many plushies/dolls that she has no clue what IP they are from and some that even I don't know the IP. But I definitely have gotten her D&D clothes lol
re: dropping Portuguese translation: I work in an industry where supporting languages outside of English is also a big deal, but adds a lot of labor to the development cost.
Most companies seem to do as WotC did and base translation on profit margin. I know a few companies that have committed to broader language coverage and absorb additional labor costs, but those are rare.
Well, the translation to portuguese is kind of a recent thing here in a brazil anyway, compared to how long 5e has been around, and there are only a few books that received those translations ( and its not even that good of a translation tbh ), its sad but those that already played dnd here a few years back did it either through fan translations or simply in english. I think as a community, we here in brazil are used to having to deal with it. I dont think it'll affect that much the ttrpg scene here, but it 100% sucks for those that dont know english and were getting to know the game now.
I never used the setting lore or characters in any deep way, though I loved reading the novels and campaign books. I miss them, it always gave me inspiration. Each setting felt unique.
Now the so called settings in DnD feel shallow and if people want lore, its very surface level or non existent.
Just like an elven choir for sure! 😂
Where's Daggerheart you ask? March 12th.... they just announced open playtest!
The simplest way to lay out factions is to divide them into factions the PCs might join and enemy forces.
If the players join one or more factions, look up how faction membership is rewarded in Ravnica or Theros and adjust accordingly.
For all other factions the party isn't connected to, give them a clock to track their goals that run counter to the party's goals or let them sit in the background. If an enemy faction doesn't have a goal that can be tracked with a clock that the PCs need to race against, then that faction doesn't really matter in the campaign.
Agreeing with Shawn, I’m interested in curating more games and books with my RPG budget. I have no use for an owlbear plush.
RE: Marketable toys and plushies: D&D is a TTRPG, and I think Hasbro would be reticent to invest in things that may make it look anything other than a TTRPG. Keyword being "may". Hasbro invests in the brand, but that means making you think that it is still about the game. If they made toys and plushies, that would give an impression to some of its fanbase that the game is moving away from being this thing that you do on the table.
I think apparel is immune to this because anything can be on a shirt with no consequence, and wearing your interests is a normal thing. The Lego deal is immune to this because Hasbro did not make Lego- it was a partnership deal, and people already have a history of using Lego as alternatives for minis. The D&D VTT is immune to this because there was already a trend where people play on VTTs, and Hasbro wants to offer an official alternative.
However, if you make toys or plushies, that is sending a message that you want to appeal to kids, and there are people in this fanbase that do not want to be looked as "kid consumers". If you want toys or plushies, better hope someone strikes a marketing deal with Hasbro for that- at least with that, people will think that this is not 100% a Hasbro move.
RE: Important Characters: D&D can't have many "main good guys" because it inspires you the player to be that main good guy, whether the setting is from an established one or not. You can tell this in fanart that people do- it's occupied mostly by party OCs. Villain art is rare, and if you see that then it's likely the DM's work (or commissioned by the DM).
I only reason I think of the Rome Empire is when I am world building.
I find it weird when Shawn said that people though Dragonlance was a corruption of D&D, to me, there has been nothing more D&D than the Dragonlance books. For starters it had dragons everywhere, and plenty of dungeons, and like almost every home game, a bunch of homebrew stuff to make the game unique to that setting.
I also think it was a good basis for a D&D show, as it had all those elements and a highly dramatic and well written story that is familiar to older gamers and and new and fresh to new players, but also in my opinion, a story that would still be compelling to people that don't have any interest in D&D.
that intro was certainly a choice lol
i think critical role watches this, they just posted an announcement for a playtest of daggerheart. i too thought it was coming out sooner than 2025 with all the promo they were doing for it
when it comes to selling merch based on characters, i do agree that it's mostly a scale problem. i think this came up with the whole hasbro wanting to monetize dnd. that's why they want to make movies and video games and now theyre doing more books. can sell stuff off those and it will hopefully bump the brand to the next scale. they tried it really hard with the movie, all kids of toys and plushies
love the outro, not a babida babida but still quite nice :D
i own two owl bear plushies. no other squishy things
bought them for my boys, who love them
I am a Japanese speaker living in Japan. English relies on machine translation. For the past few years, I've been mainly playing D&D5e.
Japan certainly has its own TRPG culture. It feels like there's a lot of narrative-driven playstyle centered around Call of Cthulhu.
There are a variety of publishers in Japan, from indies to long-established publishers, and there are many other Japanese-language high fantasy games that can be played in a campaign style other than D&D. To be honest, D&D has a lot of enthusiastic fans, but I don't hear about people playing it very deeply, probably because it doesn't mesh well with the one-shot-centered game style. Sales were neither good nor bad. While it runs out of stock in urban areas, small stores in the suburbs remain unsold on store shelves.
I hope the sales of D&D Japanese are not canceled. Or maybe someone will accept a contract to translate Tails of The Valiant.
I'm an investor in The Aetherial Expanse, so I hope and trust that you'll enjoy the product.
30:45 I would say 5e is not great for low magic settings because of how powerful spellcasting is and how magical honestly all the classes are. If you need to play 5e with glacial level progression and with only a third of the classes to get a low magic setting to work, a different game would be better suited for the task.
I have seen people use the old addage "your heroes are the exception" to justify low fantasy games in 5e, and it's fine if that is enough to suspend your disbelief on this matter, but to me that isn't a good justification.
D20 systems for low magic, gritty fantasy works just as well as any other system, like that skeleton is pretty neutral, but as soon as you put the muscle of classes and spellcasting on there, it becomes a harder sell (while yes, the fat of individual spells and subclasses and ancestries can be trimmed easily).
I actually like reheated spaghetti...
Social, but make it Magic
Speaking of D&D Characters, do Ben and/or Dael know about Large Luigi?
126, official death of the bapuhduhbapuhduh???
What if these heroes (Drizzt or other big names) gave the players the quest cause they needed help?
My child knows of Huggy Wuggy through RUclips videos.
Dael, you're charging your laser wrong. You're supposed to hide your fist in the sleeve of a long shirt and grab it with your other hand so that the cuff at the end of that sleeve looks like the muzzle of a mega buster. 😆
Re: TTRPG toys. My biggest problem with them is quality. I saw the action figures from the D&D movie and I wouldn't even buy them on super mark-down prices; they're super ugly! (And the female figures were super-scarce -- as in, I couldn't find any.) I love the owlbear plushie, but I'm not paying 5x the usual plushie price for a D&D-branded tag on it. I am a mini collector, but the D&D branded stuff looks like garbage.
On toys and collectibles, I think it's nearly a guarantee that a Critical Role action figure would do better than an Acererak one. A Critical Role Magic The Gathering set would do better than the generic D&D one too, I think.
Some people perform their fandoms a lot more than others, and some fandoms encourage the performance of the fandom a lot more. D&D is not a fandom that people tend to perform in public on display to the rest of their lives. Most D&D players may have a t-shirt or sticker. Many Many Many more Critical Role fans will have art, toys, shirts, cosplays etc of that fandom.
I think the Owlbear plushie market is for grandma who knows her grandkids like this D&D thing (they don't know whet that means) and buy it as a christm as gift.
They really should just translate them but make them paperback. Why must they be so adamant to not adapt?
I feel genuinely sorry for this generation that is getting into D&D without any novel line to get them into the lore. "D&D isn't really a world with stories in it, or that has a canon..." Well, it certainly used to. I get that, yes its a RPG, and you can build your own worlds, but I LOVE the Forgotten Realms, and I think you can be a fan of the game and the lore and separate the two.
Do enough people care about another opinion on TRRPG news to pay for it when there’s a lot of free opinions in RUclips and numerous blogs? Just wonder if it will pay off in the end for them. I hope them the best, regardless!
Isn't the whole pitch that it isn't just another opinion blog? That whole "real journalism and reporting" idea
@@spikehammer3112 maybe I missed understood. Thought was “citizen journalism” and isn’t that just non-professional journalists? I could be wrong.
Why would anyone pay to see rpg news that's going to be widely discussed in a weeks time?
Discord servers can be a great way of getting news. As can Reddit. I've tried to replace Twitter with those.
12:54 no, its not a mere economical i$$ue (the english books are cheaper here). They are also cutting MtG. I sent an email about it, but was ignored.
🤣
I like P.R.I.S.M.A.T.I.C. - S.H.A.R.D. better. (Political, Religious, Intellectual, Supernatural, Military, Ambassadorial, Technological, Infrastructural, Commercial. - social, historic, artistic, resources, demographic
I think you should learn more lore before dropping ideas like retconning the lore.
There are hunderds of novels, retconning them all would be as bad idea as disney retconning the extended star wars universe.
You guys got so off topic in the last 15 minutes of the show. It went from talking about D&D lore all the way to toys.